Nowadays I reconcile all my bank statements nicely. In the bad old days before I had really got to grips with Sage, I didn't. As a result, when I try to use Sage to do a VAT return it sends a nasty message saying there are 325,009,568,115* transactions from before the specified period and do I want to include them?
For approximately 325,009,568,113 of these transactions, the answer is "no". Unfortunately buried in there are possibly a couple of invoices and bills that, er, were temporarily mislaid and hence not included in previous VAT returns.
Is there some easy way to do a search for old, unreconciled bank transactions, the vast majority of which date from a previous company financial year? When I go to the Bank window and press "reconcile" on the various accounts all it does is show evidence of my recent virtue: nothing there except a few things from the last week or two that came in since the most recent statements.
*I've told myself a million times to stop exaggerating.
You may have the answer there, jenand. Despite having used Sage for our business for three years now, I have never actually run a VAT return on Sage!
I don't know if I am the only one - I know that for many people the VAT Wizard is the whole point of Sage - but I actually found it easier to calculate the VAT on Excel and then do a journal to transfer the Purchase and Sales VAT for the period to the VAT Liability Account. Or not easier, exactly, but easier to have confidence that I had got it right. I just didn't trust those figures magically appearing in Box 7 and Box 4 and so on.
How can I retrospectively reconcile these transactions to my past VAT returns, while still keeping an eye out for the two or three that I think should go late into the next return?
Depending on how many you have to do, you could re-run each period in Sage and see if it corresponds to your manual returns? After running each return (if it agrees) you should reconcile it (hit the reconcile button on the VAT return) and go on to the next period. If you find the two or three transactions in one of the returns then it might be best just to reconcile them and make a manual adjustment on your next return.
Alternatively you could run the return for the whole period of unreconciled transactions and then see if the total agrees with the totals of your manual returns. (Which it wont if there are a couple of transactions in Sage not accounted for in your returns, but then you wont be able to isolate them that way).
If you run the VAT return over the whole period, then click on the VAT total, you'll get a breakdown by tax code. If you double-click on T1 (presuming no extra-UK activities) you'll get a transaction breakdown. Then you could print that list and tick them off with your records in Excel.
Hi, I would be inclined to: complete VAT in the historical period (preferably a closed year end) and archive reports - could even pull them through to excel (one line at a time by clicking on the items in section) Tick box to include all in period .Then archive this history. Compare the year end figures - you may have to complete an adjustment and do again for the next period until you slowly get up to date. Do not forget to complete the VAT wizard in between to ensure it goes to the liability account (ensuring the date is for the period you require not the computer date).
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Donna Curling - Complete Book-Keeping Ltd (CBKLtd) - 07939 101900
Thank you to all who replied. I ended up doing something quite like what you suggested, although I did not pull them through to Excel, and it worked!
At least, I think it did - the totals agree to within 40p. Now this 40p is an old enemy of mine and I don't think it has anything to do with this. I have given up on ever tracking down what it is about.
I had already manually made the transfers to the VAT Liability Account by doing journals at the end of each VAT period. That used to be my standard way of dealing with VAT. Well, now I can finally use the VAT Wizard since I have decided that I do trust it after all.
